| Summary:
The best way to celebrate Independence Day is to understand
what we all must do to fight the seductive idea of government
dependence.
[www.CapMag.com]
Two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark
to explore the vast spaces of North America from St. Louis
to the Pacific Ocean. Jefferson understood the enormous challenges
for the growth of knowledge and liberty on a continental scale.
These were the first steps in the most spectacular expansion
of individual freedom and human achievement in history.
Today
the challenges are not geographical. While it took centuries
of progress and effort to achieve the freedoms we still experience,
we can lose them all in a single day when Congress is in session.
"Eternal
vigilance is the price of liberty," wrote Wendell Phillips
in 1852. This maxim is especially relevant today. We have
choices and challenges in every aspect of our lives, but most
notably in medicine. We can either watch our freedoms continue
to slip away, or act to protect them.
The best
way to celebrate Independence Day is to understand what we
all must do to fight the seductive idea of government dependence.
While this is most acute as it applies to health care, it
is increasingly evident in all aspects of our daily lives.
There are those in politics, in academia, in the media, and
in Hollywood who are made very uncomfortable by the prospect
of independent, autonomous citizens taking responsibility
for their own lives and the pursuit of their own happiness.
They would prefer a country in which everyone was dependent
on government for all of their health care, dependent on government
for the education of their children, dependent on government
for their jobs, their housing, their retirement—dependent
on government for life itself.
Unfortunately
many of us now take for granted that someone else—anyone
else—is responsible for providing us with health care.
The catch is that any government that pays for all of our
health care will control the details of every available treatment,
every procedure, and every medication with the same grace
and wisdom with which it controls the Department of Motor
Vehicles. Worse, any government that pays for all of our health
care will inevitably come to think it owns our bodies.
The current
health care environment requires us to explore our options
as vigorously as Lewis and Clark explored the topography.
One step in the right direction is high deductible, low-premium
health insurance in conjunction with a Health Savings Account
(HSA). This combination can give you the freedom to make health
care decisions for you and your family in an affordable way.
If Congress acts to exclude the cost of these premiums from
income tax they will be even more affordable. If your employer
provides for some or all of your health insurance, request
that they offer a plan with an HSA element. You would then
be able to use those funds for health care as you see fit—and
take them with you if you change employment or retire.
There
are other things we will need to monitor to keep our health
care decisions free from government regulation. The Federal
government says it now wants to do more to protect your privacy.
How? By requiring your doctor to keep all of your records
on computers and make them available to the Federal Government.
Physicians also have to prove they are protecting your privacy
by meeting exhausting reporting requirements on what they
are protecting. (Of course, if the government ends up paying
for all of your health care, do you really think they won't
have all the information about everything your doctor is doing?)
On this
Independence Day, and on all future Independence Days, we
have a choice. We will either be able to note the actions
we are taking to preserve our freedom—or we will just
be taking a day off work in the name of an historical event
that has become irrelevant. We will be enjoying a celebration
of life and freedom—or a rapidly receding memory. You
decide.
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